


The Rumor Come Out: Does the Old Gods is Trans?

by Inaudible (HankTalking)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Coming Out, Dragon Age Lore, Gen, Horseback Riding, Old Gods (Dragon Age), Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - Revelations, Qunari Culture and Customs, The Western Approach, Trans Female Character, Trans Inquisitor (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:27:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25409179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HankTalking/pseuds/Inaudible
Summary: Four warriors, three days, a journey in the Western Approach. Another journey occurs simultaneously.Party balance? I don’t know her.
Relationships: Female Adaar/Blackwall | Thom Rainier, Female Adaar/Cassandra Pentaghast
Kudos: 20





	1. Muscle

“So, what then? Because I fight, you see me as a man?”

“Depends on if you’re wearing the armor.”

I wonder, vaguely, as we climb the last half-dozen feet of sharpened desert rock to our destination, if I should intervene. It’s always difficult to tell if Cassandra is genuinely uncomfortable or just settling into her usual level of disdain, especially if the travel and the fighting has been particularly soul-sucking that day. Which it has. Although a dragon fight has left Bull in high spirits, the rest of us drudge back to the camp above the abyss with our feet half in the sand, Frederic’s papers folder neatly in my front pocket.

“Are we back to this again?” Cassandra huffs. This causes a lock of her partially singed hair to fall in her face. “I have told you, it is not going to happen.”

“Didn’t mean to cause offense, Seeker-”

“We’re back,” I inform them both curtly. “Everyone, rest up. We’ve had a long day, so drink what you can and be ready to move tomorrow.”

Cassandra looks ready to argue, but after a moment does as instructed, and heads to the scout’s small fire pit. Bull only shrugs, nonplused.

When I’m sure bickering is firmly dispersed, the party each ambling in their own separate directions, I am free to go visit the horses. Doms wickers when she sees me, and I greet her with a rub behind the ears. The Keep can’t come soon enough, not the least because I can start slipping her small apples from the supplies crates.

Blackwall’s Anderfel Courser likewise greets him, snuffling into his neck until he laughs.

“I always hate leaving them behind,” I admit to him. “Every time I come back, I think she secretly hates me.”

“Better to end hating you than as dragon food,” he notes sagely.

“That is true.” Doms noses my hands until I open both palms and show I have nothing for her. “We did well enough without. Though Cassandra hardly seems in the celebrating mood.”

“Hm,” Blackwall notes. “I can guess why.” When it’s obvious I don’t know what he’s talking about, he says, “she’d rather I not be here. But she’s determined not to speak to me, so she’s taking it out on Bull.”

“That makes sense, I suppose.” After a minute of picking drybrush thicket out of horse-coat, I say, “she’ll understand, in time.”

“I don’t think so, my Lord. Some wounds never heal, and I don’t think this insult will be forgiven.”

He sounds so despondent that I turn to him and look him directly in the eye as I say, “ _I_ am glad you’re here, Blackwall.”

He smiles softly, the chosen title a strange sort of comfort for us both.Maybe some day he’ll be Rainier again, but for what I tell him is truth, and I’m happy to have the role he has chose at my side.

“Come,” I say. “I think Bull’s found something for the fire. We deserve a minute to sit.”

“I’ll be with you in a moment.” He pats Geoffroy on his patchwork side. “Like you said, I want to take a minute to make sure he doesn’t secretly hate me.”

I nod and take my leave, suppressing a rather unprofessional smile as I join Bull at the fire.

It’s not clear where Cassandra’s gone, but Scout Maeda has obviously got her traps working in the end since there’s a few fat hares waiting for us on a rock. On closer inspection, they’re not so much fat as massive, lean and muscled from the wasteland. Oh well. It’ll be better than another day of dried jerky, which is the only sort of ration that keeps in this heat.

I sit down on a flat rock and begin the delicate processes of skinning my dinner.

“Too bad you can’t eat dragon,” Bull muses, turning his own on a stick. “Feels like a waste when all we grabbed is some scales and a bit of bone.”

“Don’t you drink dragon blood on a regular basis?” I ask.

“That’s a one time thing,” he says. “And it was enough to remind me not to try digesting the stuff.”

I shake my head, never sure how he manages that brand of crazy. A banner of personal pride is one thing, but Reaver rituals are on an entirely different.Usually, I try to keep out of Bull’s strange customs, whether personal or Qunari, but something has been itching at the back of my mind. “Bull, about what you and Cassandra were discussing earlier…”

“What can I say? Dragon fight _really_ gets the blood pumping.”

“No!” I gag a little, due in part to the smell of raw meat. “Not that. I mean about the um… _dudes_ your fighting companies acquire.”

“We’re priesthood technically, but yeah?”

It’s my duty to keep the peace between members of the Inquisition, and I’ve found the best way to do that is to keep my opinions to myself, but… “I just don’t quite get it. If your women are too good at fighting, they are simply women no longer?”

“Aqun-Athlok, not women,” he says. “It’s not like the tamassrans are doing any re-educating or anything. Anyone who joins is just one of the boys.”

Like whenever we discuss the Qun, I find myself becoming irrationally annoyed. “Well, what if your tamassrans decide a man isn’t an adept warrior? Do you take him from the battlefield and send him to go bake bread?”

“If that’s how she best serves the Qun.” He’s getting annoyed with me too, though he’s far too good of a spy to let it show. “Listen, you’re thinking of this like it’s some massive life change. The tamassrans figure these sorts of things out pretty early, they know who’s going to excel where.”

“I think Cassandra excels,” I say. “Take her for example-”

“She was the original example.” He twirls his spit.

My teeth grind, but I take care not to glare, instead tucking a lock of hair behind my horn. “Cassandra is a noble woman, and she fights well and dangerously. Today she landed the killing blow on a dragon that the rest of us did not dare, and she did so with her head held high afterwards. There is nothing masculine in the way she fights. She is beautiful, feminine, and still a force to reckon with.”

He draws the crisp meat off the fire, juices dripping down into pit with a hiss. “I’m starting to think this is less about you being a cranky Vashoth, and more about you having the hots for the Seeker.”

“I-” I feel I should flush at that. It hasn’t been something that has ever crossed my mind before, but as he says it, it does seem like a fitting accusation. “I certainly find her… _admirable_. But doesn’t everyone?”

“Maybe.” He peels off a leg. “But most people don’t get angry about how good-looking she is that they have to rant to their friends about it.”

He has me there. I quietly skewer my own rabbit, and place it over the flames, meditating on the words that had slipped out my mouth a moment ago. Certainly I respect Cassandra, but I have also been thinking of her often, asking her to come with on nearly every excursion since the Winter Palace. She isn’t like Shokrakar: blood on her teeth and her blade being her preferred state of being. Instead, she is honorable, commanding, honing her skills as a form of craftsmanship rather than pleasure, and I can’t deny it inspires a certain sort of jealousy.

“Hey,” Bull says when I begin my own meal and the others still haven’t joined us. “Maybe talk to her tomorrow.”

I wipe my chin with the back of my hand. “You think so?”

“Yeah. We’ve still got a long way to the Keep.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Doms” means sweetbread in Qunlat because the Free Marches Ranger reminds Adaar of honey


	2. Belief

“Interesting,” Blackwall says, examining the idol. “Here I thought all the Old Gods were male.”

The Goddess of Mysteries, if this really her in human form, glares down at us from her stone plinth. I can understand why her ancient worshipers were demoralized.

I search my memories, the books I’d been pouring over on Josephine’s suggestion surfacing like apples in a rain barrel. “Urthemiel too. Or at least, there’s debate. Some sources claim her empirically the Goddess of Beauty, but the rest of what we have on Tevinter religion makes no mention of such a deviation.”

“It makes no sense for them to be male to begin with,” Cassandra says, the turn of her shoulders making it very clear she’s talking to me and _not_ Blackwall. “All high dragons are female. The males are drakes, which would make far less intimidating archdemons.”

“You would know,” Bull elbows into her rib. “ _Pentaghast_.”

She scoffs. “If we have found all there is to discover here, I will wait at the entrance.”

She doesn’t say it, but the cave unsettles her. It unnerves me as well, with it’s winding but uniform shape, as though made by a giant worm. Bare roots dangle white from the ceiling, and the smell of deep mushrooms pervades even after a day out in the desert.

“I’ll join you,” I say, and immediately get a wink from Bull. I roll my eyes.

Blackwall stands to follow, but Bull tells him, “man, you humans. Leave it to you guys to take the only ancient dragon you’re sure is a woman and give her tits.”

“Blame Tevinter, not me,” Blackwall laughs, and Bull launches into a distracting conversation where they can both talk about how much they hate Vints.

The air on the surface is refreshing. If I had to live in a place like this, I would burrow deep underground where it’s cool in the day and comfortable at night, only venturing when I got sick of eating fungus and bugs. Maybe that’s what the original builders of these tunnels were thinking.

“A pleasant night,” I say, untethering the horses.

“Indeed.” She pats her Fereldan Forder which, to my knowledge, she has not named.

Any other words I had been meaning to say die on my lips, the sands with their black abyss beyond expanding in front of me in judgment. I can see the trail we’ve taken from the south, the pits where we fought the dragon just yesterday.

“I never said,” inspiration strikes me, “but you did fine work against the dragon yesterday.”

“Thank you Inquisitor,” she says warmly. “You did amazing as well. That attack on its back leg in particular, I think you shattered at first blow. It may have saved us being crushed more than once.”

I can’t help but puff up at the compliment. Flattery usually isn’t my waekness, but from Cassandra it feels impactful, especially if she thinks well on my skills. I have to consciously tamp down my ego enough to say, “You were the one who got the finishing blow. It was truly spectacular. I would have never thought to climb on its neck in order to get under the jaw.”

“It is an old trick,” she says, as sure of herself as ever. “Old, and dangerous, which is why it has fallen out of favor. But-” Now she furrows her bow, that certainty gone. “But I saw you take a blast of fire. I reasoned we needed to end the fight soon, if we were going to take you to a healer in time.”

I remember that, the last few scurrying minutes of battle. I compulsively run my fingers through my hair, absently noting how long I’ve let it get. “Oh, right. You needn’t have worried, Blackwall took the jet for me.”

“I see that _now_.” The corners of her mouth turn down. “But at the time I was…worried.”

“Ah.” Is that meant to be taken the way I think it is? I remember Bull’s words, and try to find the perfect thing to say. “Thank you Cassandra, you are-” awe-inspiring, gorgeous, majestic, enviable, “-a dependable friend.”

I can see the flicker of disappointment, the moons reflected in her eyes as the small hope crescent of hope disappears. “Of course. You are a good man Inquisitor, one I would follow to the end of the world.”

The hush falls over us. Somewhere under the moons, a hare’s scream is cut short as some predator of the night finds its breakfast. From inside the cave, we must look like another pair of idols, frozen in stone and dark against a glowing backdrop. I feel like I’ve failed at something, but certainly if it had been worth pursuing, it would have been easier to say, right?

At least the silence isn’t awkward. It is companionable, even. That is something I definitely don’t want to lose, Cassandra’s company as valued as Blackwall’s or Bull’s (even as irritating as the latter can be.)

“I feel I should ask,” I say, in lieu of the other two arriving so we can be on our way, “is the Iron Bull actually bothering you? Sometimes it is hard to tell.”

“Me?” she says. “I should ask that to you. I could hear your argument from the other side of camp last night.”

“We weren’t _arguing_.” The familiar frustration rises up. “I just don’t understand how anyone lived that way, even formally. Take the Aqun-Athlok practice, for instance. It is so…counterintuitive.”

“I suppose it makes sense, in a Qunari sort of way,” she muses. “They assign every other aspect of their peoples lives, why stop there?”

“But Krem wasn’t assigned anything!” I throw my hands up in the air. “He chose to live like he does.” I feel like I’m throwing a fit, even if there’s only Cassandra around to see. I pull my arms back down, and instead fold them over my chest. “I just don’t understand why, if they had the chance, anyone would choose to be a _man_.”

She looks at me, and I’m suddenly rather self-conscious. Gone is her cautious optimism, instead replaced with concern.

“Sorry,” I mumble. “Was that an odd thing to say? I mean, certainly you feel that way, right?”

“I don’t know,” she says, face still taut with worry. “I’d never really considered it.”

“No?” That, somehow, surprises me the most. “Not at all?”

“Not at all,” she affirms.

I suddenly don’t feel in the mood to argue anymore. I struggle to say something, anything, that will make this conversation stop exuding its unbearable overtones, but I am saved the feat by the arrival of Blackwall and Bull, laughing at something or another. Bull gets one look at the several feet between us and shoots me a sympathetic look.

“Well!” I say, a little too loudly on the deserted precipice. “Lets be off then! Another hour to the next camp, and we all want our beauty sleep.”

It is stilted and awkward, and even Blackwall seems to be catching on, looking between Cassandra and I as the wheels turn in his head.

No one has moved. “Come on then!” I hop on Doms. “No time like the present.” Then I steer her to the north, not checking to see if the others are following.


	3. Resolve

“Ow… _ow_.” I would like to say more than that, but practice a little restraint as the quillback spine is slow extracted from my arm.

“Keep faith Inquisitor,” Blackwall sooths, despite the fact that his voice was not created for anything within the same _country_ as ‘soothing’. “We’re halfway done.”

“ _Half?_ ” I’d really been hoping it was more than that.

“I really don’t think _you_ get to complain, Boss,” Bull says from where he’s lying face down on a nearby rock, Cassandra pulling spines from his backside like his pants are a particularly stripy pincushion. “Yowch! Think you could do it any harder, Seeker?”

“For the last time Bull, it isn’t going to happen.”

“Okay, for once that wasn’t the way I meant- _vashedan_.”

Bull swears a bit more. I turn to Blackwall and say, “should we find a place a bit further away?”

“Lets.”

We gather our limited healing potions and leave Cassandra and Bull to sort things out. The quillback ambush had been a welcome fight, despite the injures, and I’m glad that a dragon hasn’t dulled thrill of a good old fashion wild animal attack. Almost makes me homesick.

The fight had also, thankfully, chased us near some natural shade. There’s a nice outcropping where the heat hasn’t hit to badly, and we sit down again, I offering Blackwall my arm so he can resume his work.

“You’re awfully good at this,” I say, thinking how much better I’m fairing than Bull.

“Had to patch myself quite a few times as a travelling Warden,” he explains, the next quill slowly extruding itself under his touch. As we sit in companionable silence, he adds, softly, “a lot of those days, the loneliness could eat you from the inside out.”

“Oh.” I turn my head to him, but he still has his concentration firmly on the line of foot-long spines still in my arm. “That is…quite a heavy one. Are you alright, Blackwall?”

“Now, yes.” The final one comes out, and he lays it beside him, hardy stalks of grass coming to encircle it in their blades. “Now that I’ve allowed my mistakes to be known, I can begin to make peace with it. Truly atone. And some may never forgive me, but it was a step I had to take.” He ties a knot on the bandage, and finally looks up at me, meeting my eyes with surprising intensity. “Shame wants to stay inside, where it can fester, but I won’t let it anymore.”

He’s told me as much before, but never that look deep in his eyes. I haven’t seen that since we first found him behind those bars. “Has something happened?”

He frowns. “No Inquisitor, nothing’s happened.”

“And why keep calling me ‘Inquisitor’? What happened to ‘my Lord’?”

At that, the frown turns into nearly a grimace. “I thought it wouldn’t be…prudent. Considering your current state.”

For a moment, I hold the glorious fantasy of playing dumb, but I let it die as soon as it arrives. I slouch, ignoring what the position does to the pain in my arm. “You know about that, then?”

“Cassandra may not talk to me, but she talks to Bull. ‘I just don’t understand why anyone would choose to be a man’? That’s quite, as you say, quite a heavy one.”

“No offense intended,” I say blithely.

“Of course,” he says, but doesn’t seem tickled by my joke. “…I take it you’ve been ruminating on what that might mean?”

“All day,” I admit. It took getting stabbed in the arm several times to get me to stop, but here we are again, right back at square one. “But it doesn’t matter. I can’t be that, not when I have the whole Inquisition and the opinion of the entire Vashoth race riding on my back!”

I resist the urge to pick at the bandages. Dismal memories seep around the edges of my mind, like the poison in the quills as the poultice beats it back.

“You know,” I say darkly, “they attacked my company, just because someone spread a rumor that I was using forces to secretly convert people to Qun? What a laugh. The Qunari call me _less than_ , and the humans will still claim I’m their scion.”

“That is more than any one person should bare,” Blackwall says softly.

“And even if I weren’t, I-,” I swallow. “I _love_ to fight, it’s what I am. I enjoy the glory of it.”

He lifts his bow. “As do I. That doesn’t sound like such a terrible thing.”

“You don’t get it,” I fret. “Women who fight don’t exist under the Qun.”

“You’re not under the Qun,” he reminds me. “For that matter, neither is Bull. I know you talk to your horse in gibberish and wear some fancy paint, but you’ve never based your identity on where someone else came from. Why start now?”

I sigh and draw my knees up to my chest. “I…I’m scared Blackwall. I’m scared of what it means.”

He puts a hand on my arm, above where the bandage is tied with strength but still care. “I know, Inquisitor.”

A few minutes of silence pass between us, my face pressed downward, only the sound of Bull’s occasional grunts from the around the corner to disturb us. Finally, I say, “can you stop calling me Inquisitor, though? It sounds strange coming from you.”

“I can.” He pauses. “Shall I say ‘my Lady’ instead?”

I think, and tuck where a strand of white hair has fallen out of place. “Yes. Yes, let’s try that.”

“Very well,” he says with a small smile. “My Lady.”

The words thrill something inside me, something I have no word for, and it fills every fiber of my being. It shoots outwards, reaching my toes, my fingers—I swear I can feel it in the tips of my horns. I don’t know whether to beam or hide my face so I settle for both, unable to meet Blackwall’s eye as he checks on me.

“Adaar?” he asks, unease written into his voice.

“Yes!” I say a little breathlessly. “That’s me!”

He helps me up, and as we gather our party (Bull somehow the grumpier of the two), I can’t make the twisting winds in my head into something substantial. I almost wish I had Kaariss’s way with words, but then examine that thought, and realize if I’m wishing that I _must_ be going crazy.

Somewhere along the way we slow, as Bull’s brave face is no longer fooling me, and I make him get off his horse to walk. The slow pace is no trouble. I have a thousand things to figure out before we get back.

Blackwall and I ride side by side, mute throughout, and soon enough Griffon Wing Keep appears in the distance, setting sun striking every silver wingtip.

We stop on a ridge as soon as it comes in sight. “I feel…” I say to him. “I feel something should be different.”

I look down at myself. Despite all my revelations, I’m the same as when I left, less than a week nothing on a body that’s been alive for thirty-two years. At the very least, I should wear my scarf different, or have some wicked scar to prove I’ve changed. Instead, I have the marks of quillback spines, a burn of dragon fire on my left hand, and a lingering odor of sweat and sulfur. I run my fingers through my hair and, just to try something, let it fall out to the sides of my face.

“I’m sure that will come with time, my Lady,” Blackwall assures me. The title gives me the same delight it did the first time, and I try to hide better the heat in my cheeks.

We watch Bull and Cassandra pass beneath us, to Bull’s call of, “look who’s the slowpokes now!” as they plod to our destination.

“I should definitely talk to them before we get there, at least,” I muster, motioning to their backs. The thought sends a sinking through me, the idea of talking to my companions not nearly as comfortable as it was a few days ago. Or, I realize suddenly, as comfortable as it is with Blackwall. “Cassandra’s suspicious already. And if she’s talked to Bull he’s…annoyingly perceptive.”

“Comes with the territory,” Blackwall agrees.

Suddenly, Dams nips Geoffroy on the neck, and the stallion immediately shies away from her with a squeal.

“Hey!” I say, pulling her reigns away from the other horse. “What was that for?”

“Ha!” Blackwall exclaims. “I think our mounts are friends.”

“That didn’t look friendly to me,” I say.

“A bite can be, if it’s from the right person,” he says with a sly grin.

“Eugh,” I say, but I can’t hide my amusement. “You’re staring to sound like Bull.”

“I heard that!” calls from the distant sands.

I lean and whisper, “annoyingly. Perceptive.”

But whatever the bite was, Geoffroy seems to have already gotten over it, and moves away from us and down the ridge. Blackwall turns and shrugs. “Guess we’re moving out.”

“And here I thought I was in charge.” I look at Dams, but she gives no recognition that she’s been anything but a perfect traveling companion. “Alright, lead the way, miss,” I tell her, and we venture forward, after Blackwall and after our friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adaar can have a little gender euphoria. As a treat.


End file.
